“Okay.” I cleared my throat, trying to remember what I’d typed into those slides. Being put on the spot like this always made me nervous; I’d been hoping to use the bullet points on the presentation to guide me safely through this discussion. Now, with these three guys staring at me and no notes to keep me on track, my mind was a total blank.
Will and Mitch exchanged self-satisfied looks, but Johnny squinted, patiently waiting for my response. And suddenly, I remembered: Fluttr was trying to woo me. I had something they wanted, badly enough to fly me First Class across the country and put me up in a fancy hotel. There was no reason for me to worry about blowing this, because I was the one holding all the cards.
“Well,” I said, “it all started one night after I’d had a really bad couple of experiences with Fluttr.”
“Like what?”
“One guy stood me up. And then another one kept sending me dick pics.”
“Yeah, that happens a lot.”
“A lot. And I don’t mean to sound critical, but it doesn’t seem like Fluttr has an effective method of putting a stop to it. You can flag profiles, but they never actually get suspended.”
“We don’t really believe in account suspension.”
“Even when people are using their accounts to harass other Fluttr users?”
“Harassment is a strong word.” Johnny touched the tips of his fingers together and pursed his lips. “I don’t think a man who sends a picture of his penis is trying to purposely make anyone feel uncomfortable. I think they’re just inexperienced.”
“Inexperienced.”
“Yeah. Guys are nervous around girls. They don’t know what to do or say. They see a pretty face and they act stupid. I’m not saying it’s right, but I also don’t think it’s depraved, like some people try to make it out to be. Honestly, I don’t think what women experience on Fluttr is any different than what they might encounter in a real-world singles scene, like in a bar.”
“Interesting.” I wasn’t quite sure how to respond. Personally, I’d never had a guy whip his dick out on me in a bar. I was sure it had happened plenty of times to plenty of other women, though I was also sure it happened a lot more frequently on Fluttr. Flashing someone was a lot easier when you didn’t have to look them in the eye.
But the man sitting across from me was a multimillionaire who ran the most successful dating app in history. Did I really want to have this argument right now, right here, in his executive suite? No. Especially not when there was a good chance he was about to offer me money or a job or both. There would be time to fix what was broken about this system after I’d successfully clawed my way out of debt.
His attitude certainly explained a lot about why Fluttr worked the way it did, though. It also demonstrated why JerkAlert was a necessity.
Will/Mitch spoke up for the first time. “It cuts both ways, right? Did you see that Reddit thread about JerkAlert yesterday? Women can be pretty terrible, too.”
“Yeah,” Mitch/Will replied. “I felt bad for a couple of those guys.”
“Like the ‘teeny weenie’ dude.”
The three of them sucked air through clenched teeth, their faces distressed.
“I was disappointed to see that Reddit thread,” I said.
Johnny laughed, like I was making a joke. “Nah, that thread was great. As of this morning, there were over nine hundred forty-four comments. You couldn’t ask for a better advertisement.”
“Yes, but I hadn’t realized the negative ramifications of allowing women to post whatever they wanted on JerkAlert. To that end, I’ve given some thought to different methods of how to police the data to make sure only valid and relevant reviews get posted.”
He dismissed me with a wave of his hand. “Let’s not worry about that. Now, Mitch, can you bring up the search page for a minute? I have a question about how the JerkAlert profiles get linked to Fluttr.”
Mitch tapped his tablet and we sat in silence for a few seconds, waiting for the page to load. It was awfully slow. Much slower than usual, even when accounting for recent performance issues.
Then, as if I was trapped in some hideous nightmare, an error message filled the screen: 504 Gateway Timeout.
JerkAlert wasn’t responding. My app had crashed.
Shit. Shit, shit, shit.
“Web traffic must’ve increased because of the Reddit thread,” I said. “The server is probably overloaded.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Johnny said. “The code probably just needs to be refactored.”
“The code is totally clean, I swear. It’s a hosting issue. If the site was moved to a load-balanced environment, this would not be happening.”
“Right.” He exchanged sidelong glances with Mitch and Will and I resisted the urge to throw up. Because I knew what they were thinking: Girls can’t code for shit.
Determined to prove them wrong, I reached for my laptop, flipping it open and turning it on in one movement. “Let me give you a quick code walk-through. You can see for yourself how it works.”
Johnny held up his palm. “Melanie, that’s not necessary. We’re not interested in the code.”
“You’re not?”
He shook his head. I was completely confused. Clicking my laptop closed, I asked, “Then can you tell me why I’m here?”
“Fluttr would like to purchase the JerkAlert database.”
“Just the database?”
“Yes. We’re willing to pay five hundred thousand dollars.”
“Uh...” It was a struggle to form words or to think coherent thoughts.
Half a million dollars.
They wanted to give me half a million dollars for something I’d created on an angry whim less than three weeks ago.
“That sounds...” I took a deep breath, slowly blew it out. Get yourself under control, Mel. “That sounds intriguing. And you’re just interested in the database? Not the code?”
“Right. We’re gonna chuck the whole front end and integrate it seamlessly with the Fluttr app.”
“This data is just a starting point,” Will/Mitch added. “Eventually, we’d like to align JerkAlert users with Fluttr accounts so that people can start leaving reviews directly on other people’s profiles.”
“So, the reviews would no longer be anonymous?”
“Well, they’d be anonymous to Fluttr users,” he said. “But the important thing is we’d know who was writing them. That way we could track their activity more efficiently.”